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ADDRESS 


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To the Hawaiian People ! 

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I the undersigned, who have heretofore addressed you many 
times on public affairs, through the columns of the Nuhou, and other 
mediums of communication, think this present election period a 
proper occasion for venturing upon a word or two of advice and sug- 
gestion. But I hasten to say at the outset of my remarks, that I am 
not a candidate for election as a representative of the people in the 
next Legislature ; and you will readily believe me when I say, that I 
have no occasion to seek or care for the emolument of office, whilst 
the island of Lanai affords me very bountifully the means of compe- 
tence and independence. I speak therefore from the promptings of a 
sense of patriotism and as a lover of Hawaii. 

1. I regret to say that I hear mention made among you of an u Em- 
ma Party as if the question of the election of a Sovereign of these isl- 
ands was still an open one, and was not irrevocably settled. I now say 
to you most emphatically that the persons who pretend to form such a 
so-called party, and who advise any disloyalty to the reigning Sove- 
reign, are fomenting a most foolish and dangerous discussion ; — one 
that is most hurtful to the peace and credit of the country, and 
injurious to the reputation of the illustrious person, whose name 
is no doubt wrongfully assumed as a party denomination. Listen not 
O, Hawaiians ! to such wicked and dangerous, though stupid advisers, 
who set up pretentions as an u Emma Party.” 

When Kamehameha V. died, without naming a successor, it was 
perhaps a misfortune for you Hawaiian People, who had been nurtured 
in traditions of reverence for a Sovereign Chief, to be called upon to 
elect a successor to the Throne ; but this only remained to be done in 
accordance with the provisions of law. I then joined with Hawaiian 
Electors, and I can claim with a few others to have wielded an im- 
portant influence in the organization of the popular feeling, which led 
to the election of King Lunalilo. And again at the demise of the 
chosen Chief, I took a lead, as you well know, in organizing public 
isentiment towards the election of His Majesty on the Throne ; and 




(In English and Hawaiian .) 


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14 

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in so doing, I opposed the candidacy of a most distinguished high 
Chiefess, whom I, as well as you revered as the most illustrious Lady 
of the land. Therefore, in view of the part I have taken, I may be 
permitted to speak now, and to advise you Hawaiians on the subject 
of loyalty to the Sovereign. I desire to say to you, that not only is it 
in accordance with the sanctions of law, your bounden duty to sustain 
loyally the choice of your representatives ; but that it is more espe- 
cially your highest interest to cultivate and cherish a sentiment of 
love towards the recognized Head of your Nation ; and to unite as 
one man to guard his person and uphold his authority ; by so doing 
you will establish a name for good sense and patriotism which will be 
a guarantee for the highest prosperity ; because when you respect 
your own laws, and your lawfully, chosen Sovereign, you win the 
respect of powerful nations able to assist you, and the confidence of 
men of capital who will come here to invest their fortune. Athens, 
the most distinguished state of ancient times, and not comprising 
within her limit more people than even poor Hawaii, is said by the 
great thinker Schlegel, to owe her pre-eminence to the intelligent and 
unanimous loyalty of her people in support of her lawfully chosen 
leaders. And so, Hawaii, united by love and loyalty will be like an 
unassailable column of iron, being sustained by the generous senti- 
ment of the civilized world, but if divided by factious disloyalty, she 
will be but a rope of sand, ready at any moment to be broken and 
destroyed. 

3. You are advised by some people to disregard a treaty of reci- 
procity, negotiated with the Government of the United States of 
America. This treaty is virtually a law of our land, and only held in 
abeyance, or withheld from promulgation, on account of having to 
await a conclusive action on the part of one of the contracting powers. 
Therefore the advice to disregard what your Legislature has enacted 
is most foolish and mischievous. 

You Hawaiians will all remember, when it was proposed during 
the reign of King Lunalilo to cede Pearl Harbor, as an inducement 
for the United States to grant us a treaty of reciprocity, that I then 
opposed the contemplated cession, as not only unpatriotic but un- 
statesmanlike. I then contended, as I now contend, that America 
ought not to be offered a bonus to induce her to join with us in recip- 
rocal commercial relations, as she regards our little state as a poli- 
tical foster child, and claims this archipelago as situated within the 
scope of her continental policy. That Pearl Harbor scheme was just- 
ly defeated and abandoned, and a new treaty for reciprocity was 
brought forward and ratified by your Legislature. This treaty pro- 


3 


poses an exchange of products with a mutual remission of duties with- 
out any concession of territory, and is without the serious objections 
that were urged against the former defeated treaty. It is true that a 
clause has been admitted into the treaty now pending, which discrim- 
inates against other foreign states besides America, with whom we 
have treaties, and one to which I would have objected at the time of 
negotiation ; yet if this discrimination awakens no discussion on the 
part of such powers, you Hawaiians have no business to raise any 
question, and you ought and you must sustain in good faith the present 
treaty of reciprocity entered into by your King and his negotiators* 
and ratified by your Legislature. 

But I agree with the objectors to the treaty in one particular, that 
we should have no increase of the burthen of taxation, in order to 
carry out its provisions. I oppose any additional tax on account of 
the treaty, because we ought to meet any deficiency in revenue, which 
its operation may occasion by retrenchment. If the treaty should 
cause a loss in the revenue of even $100,000 we should endeavor to 
meet the loss by a curtailment of expenditure to that amount. This 
must be done, even if many offices of the government have to be abol- 
ished. We pay too much to office holders. Our government expends 
about eighty per cent, of the revenue for salaries and other expendi- 
tures that bring no return, and only about twenty per cent, for internal 
improvement. This state of affairs ought to be changed, so that we 
should pay only about twenty per cent, of our revenue for salaries, and 
the larger portion for much needed improvements and the upbuilding 
of the country by repopulation* 

4. Bepopulation ! — this, O Hawaiians ! is the great question for you 
to consider, to favor and to act upon. You, through your government, 
must act upon it, or you must die as a nation. You are even now too 
few to constitute an independent state qualified to hold diplomatic re- 
lations with other states. You Hawaiians numbered in 1872 about 
49,000 souls, and as decay continues and not increase you probably do 
not number at this time more than 45,000 souls ; and among this 
number not more than 5,000 able bodied men can be found. The 
whole Hawaiian nation could be transported in one ship, the Great 
Eastern , across the ocean ; and therefore, you and we foreigners ali 
included with you, are too small a number of people to be entitled to 
rank as an independent state, and would not be so recognized, were it 
not for the courtesy and permission of great states whose ships of war 
patrol the great ocean. And were it not for this recognized political 
existence of Hawaii, brought about by wise foreigners, advising your 
kings you would be subject to the dictation of any man-of-war that 


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entered the port of Honolulu, even like Samoa was recently when her 
chiefs and people were summoned before a tribunal to consider a claim 
for damages, which was set up in her port by the ship of war Ports- 
mouth , and so be like that country without the protection of your own 
courts of law. This kingdom is indeed helpless by itself. We could 
not defend our capital of Honolulu, and our small commerce against 
the attack of any small piratical ship which should come against us 
with only a squad of men and half a dozen guns. We would be ob- 
liged to appeal to the first man-of-war that came along for protection. 
Therefore there is danger if this weakness of Hawaii should continue, 
and as is likely in view of your decline in numbers, it should become 
more and more debilitated ; and we should have to appeal often to a 
man-of-war for help and the preservation of order, that our indepen- 
dence would be taken away, as a gift we could not preserve, and a for- 
eign force be placed over us for our permanent protection. 

This, Hawaiians, is not a dream, it is a real and imminent danger; 
therefore how silly is all the talk of demagogues who seek to be elect- 
ed as representatives when they talk to you about the danger to the 
independence of the country on account of a proposed loan or a treaty 
or anything else of that kind. The real danger is owing to your de- 
cline down to a mere remnant of a tribe, so that your King and your 
country are almost left without dignity or adequate support. This 
decline of people and the question of repopulation should occupy your 
chief attention, and cause you to set all minor questions aside. 

5. And now I will consider with you the causes and the remedies 
for this decline. The usual talk of the demagogue is that the presence 
of the white foreigner is connected with the decay of the red skinned 
native. But this statement is not true ; and is disproven in many 
countries where the red and the white live prosperously together. It 
is not true in Java and the Moluccas from whence your forefathers 
came. There the red skins have increased from one million to 
many millions since the whites went to live among them, because 
the native people have become as orderly and industrious as the 
white foreigners. But it is apparently true, in part of America, 
where the red skin has been a ferocious savage in times past and has 
continued so to this day, not caring for any industry or law or order, 
and only bent upon war and destruction, — such savage people must 
cause their own destruction, like the lions of Africa or the tigers of 
Asia, if they will not listen to the voice of law and order which gov- 
erns the world. But you have listened to wise teachers and legislators, 
and therefore you might expect to prosper and increase as the red peo- 
ple do in Java, the Moluccas, the Phillipines and in British India; — 




5 

and if you do not prosper there must be some cause of decay' in your 
blood or in your situation. 

Perhaps both these influences affect you. You need new blood. You 
should mingle with other races kindred to you, and become a reinvigor- 
ated people. You have been so long, so many ages isolated in the 
great ocean, and have so long inter bred and associated in your nar- 
row isles under the destructive influences of a polluting heathenism, 
that your blood has become corrupt and weakened, and predisposed to 
receive and succumb to every new disease that comes to desolate your 
beautiful islands. The red people of Java do not suffer from foreign 
diseases any more, nay not so much as the foreigners, because the red 
people of Java have as healthy and as vigorous a constitution as the 
foreigners. And their vigor and increase is owing to their being a 
mixed people of kindred races, consisting of the ancient Jawi or Ja- 
vanese stock of the Sundese, of Malays, and of Hindoos; — the latter 
having founded a great colony in Java, and constitute the bulk of the 
population of the island, which now numbers over 15,000,000 of red 
skins like you, and yet all are now called Javanese. And were these 
islands to gradually receive 50,000 Hindoos and other red races, kin- 
dred to the Hawaiian, the offsprings of these new people and of you 
native people would all be Hawaiians; and so your name and race 
would continue to possess this archipelago, even should you increase 
to 1,000,000 of souls. 

Therefore why should you, O Hawaiians ! occupy and disturb your 
minds over questions about a loan, or a treaty, or even a succession to 
the Throne, which you cannot affect or change. Let your minds 
dwell upon your sad condition as a decaying remnant of a once nu- 
merous people. Listen not to the lying talk of those who tell you 
that it is the presence of the foreigner which causes your decline. 
Look to your sad disproportion of sex. The last census in 1872 showed 
that there are nearly seven thousand more males than females. Seven 
thousand men in a little community like this who cannot get wives ! 
Look at Hilo in a population of 4220, there are about one thousand 
men who must be without natural and lawful partners. And notice 
Koolaupoko on this island, where there are 1224 men and 804 women t 
How in such a state of society can the men find helpmeets to increase 
and multiply as God commanded ? They do not find them ; but O r 
sorrow ! two and more men are content to live with mutual consent 
with one woman, under your miserable designation of puncduas , and 
there are no children ! No troops of children in Hawaii, and how 
can there be, when so many of your poor women are defiled and 
blighted with sterile wombs ! This is a woeful condition of your race. 


/ 


6 

—a condition which will not permit any hope of improvement in 
fecundity or morality ; but it affords this hope, that it is a state of 
things which if properly represented to Christian nations like Great 
Britain, having the control of populations of a stock suited for your 
national physical recuperation, would strongly and effectually appeal 
to their enlightened and philanthropic spirit to induce them to grant to 
Hawaii every opportunity for increase of people which the demoral- 
ized and declining state of this country requires. 

It may be asked, since I am not soliciting any office at your hands, 
as I surely am not, now, nor have done on any previous occasion, be- 
cause if you were to thrust upon me the duties of a representative, 
one of my first acts would be to urge the doubling of the tax upon 
your worthless dogs and horses which you prize so much, even more 
than the life of your race; so it may be asked, I repeat, why do I 
come forward now to speak and to address you, and why do I concern 
myself to declare unto you Hawaiians such bitter things? Why? 
Because I am one of you, and with you, and this is my country. It is 
true I came from a great and glorious country, which I love, and ten 
thousand fold mightier than Hawaii; but I have found a home in this 
poor little land where I have lived and prospered for fifteen years. I 
have planted my stakes in the isles. I am not a transient gatherer of 
the good things of the land which I hope to spend elsewhere. I am 
one with Hawaii, and would seek my prosperity in her advancement; 
and I now appeal to you and your representatives that may be, in the 
cause of peace and order, and that you may turn your minds to your 
only question of national life. I do not feel that I honor the teach- 
ings and the political spirit of great America by coldly and indiffer- 
ently looking upon your decay, or by hoping that you will become 
too weak and miserable to take care of yourselves, and have to be 
charitably taken care of under the tutelage of my father-land. No; 
not so do I understand the spirit of Columbia, the land of refuge of 
the poor and oppressed of all climes. I would have you become a 
valued ally of, and not a dependant beggar upon America. And if it 
should appear wise and needful to surrender at some future day, your 
political birth-right of independence, I would have the power with 
which you must unite, proud to take you, and pioudof the acquisition 
of the Hawaiian Archipelago. 

But I will not contemplate any surrender now, nor for many years 
to come. Neither America, nor any other nation wants to interfere 
with your national independence. They all want Hawaii to remain 
a neutral and prosperous little state, to be the especial refuge and re- 
cruiting station of the commerce of the world in the Pacific Ocean. 

Therefore, O Hawaiians ! listen not to demagogues who would dis- 


7 


turb your minds and alarm you in respect to the alledged designs 
against you, of America or any other foreign country. Listen not to 
discussions about treaties, loans, or other things which you cannot 
change, and which do not vitally affect you. Listen not to the voices 
of politicians who cannot keep and who perhaps do not care to keep 
one promise that they make to you. Listen not to men who led some 
of you into trouble during the late riot, and who could not or would 
not help those they led away when the hour of danger and retribution 
came. But listen to a voice of love prompted solely by a care for your 
life and increase as a people. I ought to love you Hawaiians, though 
you are so poor and degraded, with your weakness and decay in the 
eyes of the world ; for to Hawaiians I owe my life. Yes, — there was 
a time when driven out to sea in an open boat, Hawaiians, who could 
have saved themselves by swimming through breakers, yet struggled 
during a dreadful night of toil and fear with agonizing thirst in order 
to save me. And again when I had gone down into the depths of the 
sea in your stormy channel of Molokai, a Hawaiian sprang for me 
and bore me up, and saved my life. Therefore, shall I not speak unto 
you and for you, and cry out in all love and earnestness of soul, when 
your race is dying, and your poor little ship of state is in the political 
breakers ? I will, O Hawaiians ! and I speak without fear or favor 
unto King and to people alike. 

And thus I would speak unto your King. O, Chief ! successor of the 
Great Kamehameha, and seated on the Hawaiian Throne ; though 
your state be small, and the least among the family of nations, yet 
your opportunity for renown as an illustrious ruler is as great, as if 
you governed millions of souls. Of you and of your government there 
will be expected by all thoughtful men of the civilized world some 
wise, patriotic, and faithfully pursued policy for the cherishing and 
increase of your people ; and that such policy will be held paramount 
to any other questions whether of trade or finance, or other particular 
interests of the country. And you, O people ! must strengthen the 
hands of your King with cheerful service and a zealous loyalty. 
And then you, united with true hearted and loyal foreigners, can all 
join together as a strong and harmoniously blended little community 
in the building up of Hawaii. We can with union and wise co-oper- 
ation stop the prevailing wail of death with the voices of increasing 
people. We can with more women of chaste races to be found and 
got by the seeking, have more fruitful unions and gladden with mar- 
riages the land so saddened with funerals. We can make our lonely 
valleys resound joyously with the clamor of little children. We can 
enliven once more the now silent shores of Hawaii with a thronging 


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8 

and a busy people. And then when an electric cable unites us to our 
neighboring continent, and to the rest of the world ; and when the 
fleets of the Pacific rendezvous in our port of Honolulu, and the traf- 
ficking and traveling nations fill our marts with wealth gathered 
from all quarters of the globe, —then may little Hawaii the least, be 
one of the most blest of the family of nations ; and being strong in her 
Christian, moral and enlightened attitude, sit royally as the Queen of 
the great ocean, and shine forth as a proud and redeemed state before 
an admiring world ! 

Your fellow Citizen, 

Walter Murray Gibson. 

Honolulu, January 31, 1876. 



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